


The Lonely

by orphan_account



Series: Hasn't been posted yet... just a taste. [1]
Category: Dahmer/Nilsen
Genre: Cannibalistic Thoughts, Gen, M/M, Quote: I saw you. Don't let it get to your head.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23050888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Set in an alternate time, before the arrest of Dennis Nilsen back in '93; Jeffrey upon reading the book: Killing for Company that he'd bought from the fair, decides to pay Dennis a visit. While Jeff is clouded with self-doubt and needing a certain someone to tell him what he needs to hear, Dennis is unaware that he'd be receiving such a visitor at his front door.
Relationships: None
Series: Hasn't been posted yet... just a taste. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656517
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	The Lonely

Early to Mid-Spring  
1982

At a Fair recently I had bought myself a book that stood out among a few others, it had been a book written by Brian Masters entitled: Killing for Company. One of the reasons I had bought it was that of the title itself, I mean, who would not? Usually, many are so quick to judge a book by its cover and name but I myself thought beyond that and decided to bring it back home with me. On my reading it, I came across one part that intrigued me I wouldn't say the most, but it did interest me and it read as followed that:

'The contemplation of extraordinary human behaviour with vile effects reminds one of the fragility of human sanity . . . and I think studying these terrible crimes makes one more grateful for life as it is, and increases one's potential for pity, by which I mean one doesn't pity the murderer more than his victim: one pities all mankind . . .

'It's not just putting a microphone in front of his face and saying, 'Tell us, Den, how do you do it?', that would be inexcusable . . . at no point do I say it wasn't really his fault, and, ah, poor boy, he was driven to it... .'

Ever since I had stepped into learning more about Dennis, the more I had begun to trust that I'd been sharing the other half of my mind with someone who could have possibly known me just as I know myself. That also, Brian Masters just had the courage to sit and interview this man and to have understood him as I had wished to be understood. I had related to this book on a whole other level of extreme, but I had never finished it. In fact, I had set it down several times throughout those months, hardly finding my own courage to pick it back up. Just as it had spoken to me, it had also boldly put me into my place- a place I didn't at first know that I had had, a place where I would drift and think of all the wrong that I've done in my life so far.

And I was also just turning twenty-one month after next in this upcoming May.

Killing for Company had set me apart to reassemble me into a young man who had begun to see the error in his ways, albeit, eventually. Though Dennis' (the man, this killer, in which Masters spoke of) was not me, and I was not him, as a matter of fact, we shared our differences as much so as what we had shared our qualities- whether that be good, bad, or somewhere in between. Unlike Dennis, I was not as self-indulgent, unlike Dennis, I was not less as eager for an emotional connection- I /was/ eager for an emotional connection. But alike Dennis, I had realized, we were both starving for company. Someone to be around often and cry less about leaving, that much was for certain.

So I, later on, that same year had taken it upon myself to try and capture his attention, Dennis's, and considering I didn't know the first place on where to start, I had visited the local library and upon my visit there had met a young woman; a sweet librarian by the name of Michelle and she had seen me and offered me a job there after asking what I may be in looking for. I decided to take her offer upon it, but I won't trail off from the subject, that once I had become a shelving guy, I had bought myself a computer. Of course, it took me a while to get used to it, being all bulky and what have you, yet the second I had, I had reached out to the extent of putting myself out there and trying to capture the attention of this Dennis stranger.

Let me tell you, it did not exactly go as I had planned.

Mixing up my Moms old jambalaya recipe and shoving it into a mixture of other home connections that I'd brood about had drawn the wrong set of people, when in reality, I wasn't seeking the prying eyes of a few online students in a chat room- who I was looking for, was in fact, Dennis. Instead, I had gotten tattled on and it had forced me to try my luck next time and leave those ingredients where they lay. A couple of months later, that same year, I found time to travel outside of Wisconsin and out from my Grandmas's hair. I don't tell anyone that I was able to, necessarily because I don't particularly enjoy the idea of being well-to-do because I wasn't brought up that way. I've never been rich, I've been sufficient. 

It was thereafter arriving in London, that I had immediately begun to seek out this man, mid-1982, unaware that I'd been previously following behind in this older man's footsteps by also becoming a part of the Army a few years prior following the German occupation, just not of Norway.

I had seen the old, rustic looking apartment sitting there as a foreshadowing reminder of what would soon come to be. Not of what wouldn't. 195 Melrose Avenue, a place not precisely luxurious nor a pile of trash either, it stood thereupon a platform earning a couple of steps and a few breaths away from bringing my fingers to knocking on the door. There in my casual attire, I had waited, not anticipating a single answer. After all, I could have traveled all this way here for nothing, it was said that I'd visit Florida and go to Miami Beach, at the end of the day I ought to keep to my word and do just that however, as I had got to thinking about it, an older man came to the door after I had heard a bit of shuffling around inside. 

I wouldn't say that he was that much older than myself, and his dark eyes had taken me offbeat in their brooding stare beneath the tuff of chestnut-colored bangs.

He was merely thirty-six, and how weird it turned to be as if the second I had seen his face it had felt as if we were looking at one another on opposite sides of the mirror on two different planes and in different parallels of the universe. His being only fifteen years ahead and then there was me: fifteen steps behind. "Hi." I'd finally pulled through within soft-spoken address, his brows remained glued where they were, and his lips were not greeting me in a welcoming smile, instead, this guy was completely stoic standing there between door and doorframe with a burgundy embroidered, satin robe around him, in his pajamas and... interesting enough, China-like slippers. "May I help you?" His voice carried through to me, stern and shallow, not as similar to my soft-spoken tone but, indifferent and sophisticated and it was British.

"Yes, I'm uh-?" I took a breath, "looking for David?"

This man blinked at me.

"David... Gallichan?" If I recalled correctly, Dennis had a live-in partner, someone who accompanied him and helped tend to their everyday things, such as gardening, or keeping up with rent-.

"Ah. David, the old coot." His tone rattled with a mocking sort of laugh, I could hear that he's been smoking for decades, "David does not reside here anymore, I kicked his arse out of my residence four years ago, can I ask who I'm speaking to? Do I know you?"

"I don't think so," he seemed slightly off with my American roots, it was a waft of bad air to him apparently. "I'm Jeffrey. I'm an old friend of David's." I'd been lying, after all, it had been to get inside of his privacy and out of this space on the front steps. "He and I used to talk all of the time, we'd write letters to one another and keep them hidden in shoeboxes."

"Funny. He's never mentioned you before." 

How appropriate, his words held weight, pinning me into surveillance. Discovering me, he was quick to pick apart a lie. Next thing I know, he's opening the door wearing a smile on his face, "Come inside and make yourself at home, I'd just been moving about and doing my Spring cleaning." Shutting the door behind me, I had stood by and watched as the man I swore to have felt a connection with once before, and that I'd been completely unfamiliar with now, had taken in a near smooth way for the living room. Plucking a cigarette from his box, he perched it between his lips while undoing the sash around his waist and whispering the french doors open leading into the backyard. There, he'd light up the ivory stick with a solemn hum, before sarcastically pitching:

"Or whatever you Americans call it. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want one?" He rounded to face me while I made myself comfortable on the chaise inside the living room, eyeing the pattern on the rug below. "Yeah." I replied on the cigarette, looking up to him, "please." Upon passing me by he had tossed me the pack along with the lighter all the while approaching the table adorned with brewed tea and fresh coffee, "Help yourself. Fine," going on, he would fill up a china cup with tea and stir, "in knowing my... " stopping himself briefly, he made a minor correction, "in knowing /David/, I'd already assumed you would know me by name, then." The man had given me a look, propping himself against the ledge of the countertop and blowing the steam from the cup of tea. 

He appeared arrogant for the most part. And posh, for such a crappy although decent apartment.

I raised my brows suspiciously, running through the book of answers inside of my head and it was then I'd reached for the glasses on my face to remove them after lighting my cigarette.

"Yes. We have talked about you too. Dennis, am I right?"

"And what has he shared," his finger dallied over at me, "with you." Or the likes of me at the second of taking another drag from our cigarettes, I leaned back on the chaise and gradually would rest my head upwards against the back and watch him. "Not much." I focused on his expression beyond the cloud of gray, his smirk small and unsettling.

"I'm curious. Go on then. Enlighten me, make my afternoon that much more blinding." I noted the encouragement, though also when he said it, the will to outsmart me, I thought ahead on this one but not as far ahead as what I would have liked to as our emotionless, competitive faces held a standoff with one another in our silence. Quickly, I disregarded it with a shrug of my shoulders, "So maybe we haven't talked, or sent each other letters." This had gotten me a smirk in turn for my behavior, his dashing the cigarette ashes into an ashtray on the counter prior to sipping his tea.

"I would have known either way about it," he tutted, "before David and I fell all to pot, he's never once sat down to write out a letter across seas." I gave to him a tight-lipped grin, nodding a bit with another take on the cancer stick, blowing out with the words, "So how'd you two fall apart?" My question struck him down a notch, as if I'd been too curious as to ask that, or bold rather. Dennis dismissively made a gesture at me with his hand and turned to lile onto the surface, jolting his waist outward meanwhile leaning into the palm of his hand. To set the tea aside for a moment, he'd stare up into the creases of the ceiling with a sigh.

"Well, after we've furnished and redecorated the entire flat, by which I made certain he do upon my finding out that of Davids's lack of employment ambitions, I had begun to view myself likened as the breadwinner in that bloody relationship. I had been domestically /content/ with David upon our moving here within the first year, alas, we had begun to strain." 

I listened on,

"We had both slept in separate beds and began to bring home casual sexual partners. Later, we had begun arguing with increasing frequency." He, annoyed, would progress, "and following a heated argument that May of 1977, four years ago... over spilled milk. Pish posh, territorial and utter shit, I demanded he leave." Of course, Dennis not knowing me, he failed to mention that David was the one to have called their so-called relationship off, to begin with. 

"After that, what then?"

"I had formed brief relationships, over those following eighteen months; none of these relationships lasted more than a few weeks, and none of them expressed any intention of living with me on a permanent basis." Dennis span to glance my way convincingly, snuffing out the cigarette into the ashtray with a playful smile upon his face, "Now, I am living a solitary existence; after I had experienced at least three failed relationships in my past time. All of which I'd developed an increasing conviction that I was unfit to live with."

Nodding twice, I curled forward to rest my arms onto my knees, letting my head down and making that grab for my glasses beside me on the lounger to place upon the coffee table, letting my own cigarette waste away in the process. "I figured as much. There's been some book made about you."

Dennis scoffed, "Are you always fast to judge a book by its title?"

"I read it." My response had left him weak in the knees for a split second, honored or, lacking surprise? I wouldn't ever know. "I mean, bits and pieces of it. Other times, I would leave the book near my bed and forget to pick it up again." Snickering, I exhaled the smoke through my nose and extinguished the stick before Dennis could say anything else. 

"Tell me about yourself, Jeff. Enthuse me. Let me have a butcher at this story you've got."

"My life isn't all that interesting," I said.

"Oh bollocks! I've heard that line a million and one times from many different men, you're all the same, so if your intents are to bore me, I could always show you to the door."

His accusation caused shock in me, thus, I raised up the rest of the way and stared across to him, knowing now that if I were to never have mentioned it, I would later on in life regret it. In addition, I could use this moment to be honest, as he appeared to be the sort of man who honored honesty. "I have killed someone, and dipped their ladyfingers in ketchup." I could see that Dennis bit back a laugh with a roll of his jaw and a twist of his lips, "Now, we are getting along." He said, walking over to take the chair across from me, folding his leg over the other and setting his tea onto his lap. "Do carry on."

"It didn't exactly happen that way, you know. It was only a joke."

"Reading about me had brought you out all the way across the world to see me, hasn't it?"

"I did... uh, pretty much journey across the universe to see you. Yeah."

Dennis fell quiet for a minute, then would hum in agreement. "And for what purpose had you done such a thing? What about me fancies you, Jeff?"

"In the book," I stated, "by Brian Masters."

"The Author. The peeping Tom. Carry on."

"He had said something about killers, and mentioned you by name." Dennis was a little more than intrigued, his chin raised in my direction. "I went on to read about you, about what all he read about in the papers... the uh-? The crimes. And such." My voice subconsciously softened. "Well if there is one thing you shall know about me, Jeffrey, is that I am hard of hearing." Dennis pointed to an ear on the right side of his skull, "Secondly, I do not know how much of this hogwash you believe, but I do implore you to not believe in everything that you've come to read thus far. Thirdly, bloody hell," he'd scoff loudly, infuriated, unfolding his knees and taking the stand, "all this way to talk about a book by some author named Brian /Masters/?"

"Listen, it's not the main reason why I had come out all this way-."

"Then, by all means, tell me! Let me know, first it had been David. Now it is on this book you speak of-."

"Killing for Company." I pitched in calmly, he looked right over me.

"I am truly starting to believe what my senses are telling me, and I do sincerely hope you are not an undercover policeman."

"I had come here to see you." I'd interject without thought or reason, I'm guessing it was just to shut him up. For once. I didn't think I'd ever heard him talk this much, then again, I did also guess I did not know him at all. Not after judging the book by what it all entailed regarding Dennis; steadily repeating: "I came to see you. Speak with you." I sighed. His penetrating gaze never fled from me, and I had felt glued to the spot. Easing my way, Dennis tapped onto the coffee table in front of my lap, deciding upon the words before he'd even said them. One. Two, then a doubting fourth tick on the table and then:

"I suppose it is my turn to confess something, Jeff." He said, the silence creeping up again and he would slap it away with an: "You may have come out all this way to hold a conversation with a killer, but it is not of your curiosities in the things of which I have done. It is the things of which you are to do or have already taken a dabble in." Slowly, my eyes rolled up to meet his, vulnerable and blue- the contrast to his. 

"What do you mean?"

His finger came back down onto the table once more, harshly, "Oh don't pretend to play the system off with that one, darling, even I would know a killer when I saw one. And he is sitting right there... as here is another, standing right before you."

I swallowed back the dry guilt and stood up from the chaise, exhaling from my nose. "You don't know me. You don't know what I've done, I-?"

"Don't tell me, too, that you know me better than what I know you. Is this... /conversation/, sweetheart," he was being chilly, sarcastic with reason, "is it all leading up to that tiny, molecule of a reaction?" Dennis straightened up his end of the posture and took around the table to face me, directly, and without resistance. His hands found themselves resting onto my shoulders, then his body closed the distance between us leaving but a few inches breathing room; resting his plain expression onto mine. Once more I was reminded of that mirror, as taut as I was, as bold as he'd been now.

I too could be as bold.

"What else had this book told you about me?"

I heaved a sigh, "That, uh? That... you would drown yourself in liquor, namely, beer. That you... uh, devoted an ever-increasing amount of your time, effort and assiduity to your work, and most evenings you would spend consuming spirits and/or lager as you... listening to music."

His fingers tightened around my stern shoulders, then he'd muse in a near whisper, "Blackouts and a single ABBA record, spinning around. Over. And over. Again. Most times, I would awaken, hardly remember a thing- aside from the fact that, of course, Agnetha Fältskog would be slowly pulling me back into the reality of what I had done."

I hesitated to ask, though, digressed. "And what did you do?"

"I have killed, so far, a minimum of eleven men and boys. Between 1978 and now. Do you wish to know what else?" I had to wait, until then, I drew my hands up to rest around his waist, sensing for the undone sash and to delve my fingers into it. The satin stroke of material against my bare fingers aroused me, further, he aroused me for some peculiar reason. Not so much in a sexual way as what he merely had fascinated me, and he had allowed me to observe and to feel as he went on, "I do not plan to stop anytime soon. I have slain... many times out of mere curiosity, or for company, and I will do it again." My eyes rested on his exposed chest above the hem of his pajama shirt and the curl of brown hair sprouting just there amidst the flush of pink aligning his collarbone and beautifully aging neck. 

"I never meant to kill him.." there I had said it, and now that it was over with, it had left a deep hole inside of me, one that needed filling. As I stumbled to explain myself, I had fallen short to, my attention floating back to his face and finding I had grown hungrier in expressing this, while the desire to kill again almost drove me insane. To admit to it, the fault of it, felt too real and too raw, that the remorse had left me sore with need and acceptance of this truth, as well. His eyes were like two ghosts, haunting the pits of my soul as his words, like maggots, burrowed deep into my anatomy.

"Oh, but you did..." the whisper of his saying this brought to me another realization. One that hurt me, as much as it had hurt Stephen, as much as it had hurt to accept that he was leaving and that it had hurt more knowing that he had been gone. "And I am positive, Jeffrey, that in your heart of hearts, you yearn to feed this 'thing' inside of you, this endless cave where an echoing urge to consume leaves your own bones withered with rage, lust, need... and the longer you let it rule you and refuse to give in, the longer it will seek to destroy you and bring you to your knees and to tears."

"Dennis?"

The room was as cold as death. 

"What's wrong with me?"

The older man's lips curled into that smile I had become fond of in such a short while and he said: "There is nothing wrong with you, Jeffrey. The only thing wrong with either of us is that of which isn't necessarily wrong, and it is that we don't wish to be lonely."

I sank into his words, feasibly, he had been right. Essentially, those were the words I was waiting to hear all along. That we were in tune with one another, and that the unbroken ground of why I had come out here, wasn't so that I could interrogate the man- it wasn't that. It was that I had come so far, equitable to searching and to perceive that not only had my thoughts been the one thing shared. Like mindedness. But that, to the same extent, I was searching to find someone as alone as what I am to show me that my company, as well as his, was well justified.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of a WIP, a little something I've been spending a number of years working on and off on and have yet to finish. I'm hoping to have the entire book set out in stone sometime soon, it deals with a number of timelines as the reader will be able to see from, also, different people's points of view. This here is one example, working Jeffrey Dahmer in as one of the main protagonists of the story even if this story starts before he is even conceived. I plan for this book to be one hell of a something eventually.


End file.
